12 Questions to Gauge Employee Engagement

Ilan Mochari's debut novel, Zinsky the Obscure (Fomite Press, 2013), earned rave reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist. Boston's NPR station named it one of 10 "Good Reads for the Summer." He is a senior writer for Inc. magazine.

“Employee engagement” is, admittedly, a catchall term, not to mention an endlessly marketable consulting concept. So if you’re skeptical, we understand.

But earlier this year, when Gallup released its annual report on employee engagement, it included a simple tool that may help you quickly determine where your work force stands. When properly measured (Gallup argues), engagement extends beyond an assessment of how happy your employees are on the job -; it also reveals whether that happiness manifests itself in superior performance.

Gallup’s report is based on the results of a survey, administered to more than 25 million employees in 189 countries, in which respondents answer “true” or “false” to a dozen statements. These questions, Gallup says, constitute “the best predictors of employee and workgroup performance.”

The first two criteria in the list below are critical; they address employees’ primary needs. The others address three stages: how workers contribute to the whole and are valued; organizational fit; and development.